Topic by RaymondRobijns

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  • RaymondRobijns
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Topic: Differences in produced sound

My system: W7/X64, with EMU 1616M PCIe. All soundchips on Mobo are disabled. I use Microsoft Player for playing back the wave/mp3 files. I also have SONAR 8.5.3 Producer for 32- and 64 bits installed. When using PianoTeq in host SONAR the sound I hear is rather different from the sound I hear when the file is rendered to wave-format and played back with Windows Media Player. Yes, in WM player I set all so called enhancements to off and the Dolby also.

My SONAR system is using ASIO and WDM is using WDM drivers of course. Today I introduced an internal midi cable, configured SONAR to play the info thru that cable to the freestanding PianoTeq and now the sound is just the same as with Windows media player alone.

But how is it possible that when playing back in SONAR or e.g. Adobe Audition the sound is different from the plain Windows Media Player and what can I do to overcome this? I searched the Internet and some threads in various forums are dealing with this issue, but any solution is not given.

Please help,
Raymond

Last edited by RaymondRobijns (05-05-2012 23:58)
Website (only in dutch for now) http://www.demuziekvanraymondrobijns.nl

Reply by jcfelice88keys

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Re: Differences in produced sound

Hello Raymond,

I am not sure how to answer your question.  If you notices differences in audio quality, then they certainly exist for you.

The enclosed URL is a 58 minute YouTube of an Audio Engineering Society meeting about 5 years ago.  It is very eye opening and ear opening.  Although the video is quite long, I would encourage everyone to view at least the first 10 minutes.  Later in the video, the narrator uses Cakewalk Sonar to compare bit-truncation, dithering, etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYTlN6wjcvQ

Cheers,

Joe

Reply by Luc Henrion

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Re: Differences in produced sound

looks like a "summing" issue: even if there is no plug-in at all in the mixer, the signal travels through a serie of controls, mostly level, maybe sample rate conversion, bit truncation... you name it. If this happened in a completely "transparent" way, there should be no difference. That's the theory. In practice, it's rarely so, even if the DAW doesn't show you; and many people hear a difference between the "summing" part of different DAW's, simply because there ARE differences !
Try disabling (completely, not only "bypass") everything you can in Sonar.

Last edited by Luc Henrion (06-05-2012 09:02)

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Reply by RaymondRobijns

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Re: Differences in produced sound

Thank you. I will have a look at it today.....

Raymond

Website (only in dutch for now) http://www.demuziekvanraymondrobijns.nl

Reply by RaymondRobijns

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Re: Differences in produced sound

I solved the problem, I think. Though I have all knobs at the same spot when working with SONAR and playing back with Windows, the playback in Windows is slightly louder than in SONAR....... and that gives a different perception.

I watched that video very intense, first to overcome the language barrier, next to get all "technical terms" in my brains. I found the second part, explaining all gear, fairy tales on audio and audio mysteries, the most interesting. Today I will have a second look.

Raymond

Website (only in dutch for now) http://www.demuziekvanraymondrobijns.nl

Reply by Luc Henrion

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Re: Differences in produced sound

This tends to prove I was right ;-) If the sound was "just" coming thru WMP or Sonar, there would be no difference...

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